Big Bang Theory - The Serling Continuum
by Thor2000
Summary: Alternate ending to 'Big Bang Theory: The Desperation Emanation" - Follows events in "Wizards Of Waverly Place: The Lost Son" - Leonard meets his perfect girl, a forensic anthropologist who looks exactly like Penny, in a scenario that passes through the Twilight Zone -
1. Chapter 1

The evening had started out cool and passive, a slight breeze wafting over Pasadena blanketed by the soft blue layer of nighttime shade and random flickering lights trying to pierce the clouds over his head. Leonard had started out optimistic on this blind date; he was becoming eager to meet the young lady that had been fixed up for him by his friends, but as the street lights and store fronts flickered past him through the windows of his car, he started to feel the pangs of unquiet distress welling up in him like a thermo-chemical combustion of antagonistic molecules in a self-contained chamber about to explode from a small canister formed from bonded iron, such as the inhaler he took from his shirt pocket at the stop light and squirted into his mouth to quell his asthma symptoms.

Up until last April, Leonard had been in a relationship with the blonde tenant of the apartment across from his at the Los Robles Apartment House on the west side of Pasadena. Her name was Penny Parker, a struggling actress from Omaha, Nebraska with stars in her eyes and a hopeful yet fiery aspiration to realize she was meant for something better. In her, Leonard had seen the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life, and from the first flutter of his troubled heart, he pictured the two of them in a relationship that poets would have written poems. She had the long flowing hair of a goddess, the bone structure of a supermodel and that sparkling effervescent personality of a young girl, but he was trapped to mooning her from a far as he moved from acquaintance to friend and hopefully grander relations as they lived apart separated solely by the stairway and a suspiciously non-working elevator. That big change came last Fall when Leonard came back from Antarctica with Dr. Sheldon Cooper in a search for slow-moving monopoles at the south end of the world.

Dr. Cooper was Leonard's roommate and acquaintance and recurring best friend, but he was also one of the most obtuse borderline sociopaths known to the planet. The fact that he was beyond gifted was obvious, but Sheldon's major character flaw was to decide that his genius extended to his opinion on everything and everything, even forcing Leonard to a totalitarian lifestyle into a roommate agreement on paper that made "Mein Kampf" look innocent by comparison. Sheldon forced Leonard to a ridiculous schedule that affected everything from eating arrangements, daily routines, common interests and even a bathroom timetable with a side proviso that even trapped Leonard into a position of servitude as Sheldon's chauffeur and manservant at times. Leonard tried to comply with the best of his abilities; his parents were scientists as well. His father was an anthropologist; his mother a clinical psychologist. They had both reared him on a very rigid lifestyle as well that had left him both starving for human emotion and extremely vulnerable to dominating wills, so when Sheldon came about with his Nazi-like co-habitation agreement, it was basically a transfer from one concentration camp to another.

When the emotions finally burst in the developing love story between Leonard and Penny, it was both a culmination of two things: Penny's search for a decent guy and Leonard's search for an emotional anchor. She had dated a number of guys, socially stunted wastes of testosterone that spent her money and cheated on her while lying to her in incredible far-fetched detail. She had a lost a lot of self-respect in the process and even a lot of trust in others so when Leonard came around to her as her boyfriend, it was an experience for which she was not ready. It was also a bit of a demanding nightmare to Sheldon who found Penny to be the wrench in his full-functioning psychosis. Much like Leonard, she knew Sheldon was terminally anti-social and, in the words of their associate, Howard Wolowitz, "swimming in and drinking the waters of Lake Crazy." However, it was not Sheldon's antagonism that would split up the two lovers; it was three little words Leonard had uttered to her.

"I love you."

Blinking her eyes a few times, Penny froze, stalled a few seconds too long then uttered the wrong response.

"Thank you…." She forced an uncomfortable grin then rolled over in bed with a look of both shock and unprepared anxiety, leaving Leonard confused and as lost as a falling figure looking for a parachute. He tried to work past it; he really did, but it was quite obvious that the love story was over. He was just at a different part of the relationship than she was, and they separated under tense but unspoken terms. They became just friends once more, but Leonard's heart was broken. He still loved Penny, and he thought she might have still cared about him, but as the days passed, it was becoming less and less obvious. The last straw came when Howard resumed his relationship with Bernadette Rostenkowski, a bond that even he and Penny had been instrumental in creating. It was now time to reciprocate the "Girlfriend Pact." With the pangs of Penny's voice echoing her sardonic "Thank you" to his promise of devotion echoing in his head, Leonard turned into the parking lot of the Edmonds Hotel on Oak Knoll Avenue. Their restaurant was considered favored by couples in the area for its romantic surroundings. Another brief shot of his inhaler through his lips, he eyed a car with its parking lights on and stopped to take its spot when it pulled out, but it was actually pulling in as the people in it started filing out of it ready to get dinner at this top-rated eatery. Eyeing another empty spot in the next row, he drove around and took it before it became unavailable, parking just a head of a dark blue Plymouth Reliant looking for a spot of its own.

Stepping out optimistically in his blue-gray suit, Leonard adjusted his eyeglasses briefly and fondled his tie with a tug to go meet his date. The restaurant of the hotel had a long exterior entrance for public patrons lined with a long colonnade with Doric columns supporting an extended mansard roof. A light anxiety came to him as he treaded the incline with smokers talking against the wall and descending patrons departing the Edmonds. The doors opened and Leonard could smell steaks, saltwater lobsters, fresh breads and a heavenly cacophony of specialty dishes ranging from Chicken Cacciatore to Eggplant Parmesan. He had brought Penny here twice while they were dating, but he struggled once more with his wounded heart and forced himself to forget the past to make this night worth it. Turning from the archway into the hotel, he appeared in the front lounge area with other waiting guests and looked to find Howard and Bernadette waiting at the short hall to the dining area.

"Leonard, you made it." Howard looked up dressed in a dark blue suit with a brown sweater. "I was afraid you'd get cold feet."

"But I didn't…" Leonard glanced from the busty redhead in the silver dress to the petite brunette in the casual attire. "Where's my date?" He grinned with another hopeful sparkle to his eyes.

"She's running a bit late." Bernadette responded in that quirky but dainty cartoon voice she had. "But she'll be here. She promised."

"I'm getting stood up. I know it."

"Leonard…" Bernadette looked to Howard responding to the hostess that they were ready for their table. They were led past the curtains into the empty party room reserved for large groups of people. "Her name is Joy; she's from my self defense class. She beautiful, she's smart, she's funny…"

"She laughs like a horse, smells like a horse and sleeps standing up like a horse…" Howard could not stop from adding a bit of the truth as he took his seat in a table near the entranceway, getting rapped in the abdomen by Bernadette who did not care for his unpleasant commentary. Sitting in his chair and unwrapping his utensils, Leonard looked up over his glasses with worried eyes like a scared little boy. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the platinum blonde woman in the corner leaning forward over her table with her breasts almost bobbing out the top of her dress over her plate. Her guest, a young blonde beauty in an Air Force jacket, black sweater and blue jeans with expensive boots were also checking him out briefly before turning around to talk in secret. The younger girl was attractive, but out of his league, resembling a certain young blonde television actress best known as a vampire killer.

"Forget what Howard said…" Bernadette looked at him and draped her light windbreaker over the back of her chair to reveal her violet sweater and dark dress. "Joy is a very nice girl. She's going to show up."

"I don't know, Bernadette…" Leonard was starting to sound despondent again. "I guess I'm just still in love with Penny…"

"You've got to forget her." Howard spoke up again. "You tried, the relationship imploded, you move on… There's a big beautiful buffet of ladies at there and you're still pining over a box of KFC you had five days ago."

"Are you comparing Penny to old take-out?" Bernadette interjected into his morale-busting speech.

"Are you telling her what I said?"

"Maybe."

"Then I'm not…" Howard quickly changed his outlook before he ended up like Leonard over that same box of KFC. As the waitress came to bring their water, he asked for more time for Joy to show up, but Leonard started looking over to the other restaurant patrons. It was mostly couples that came to enjoy the romantic location, but at least two families enjoying the food. The socialite in the silver dress and her niece had risen up to leave and cross behind Leonard, but scanning the room, the young physicist spotted a face that looked familiar. He couldn't place the gentleman in the blue suit and unbuttoned collar, but he knew he had seen him before on the news as part of some real estate scandal or another.

"Well, this was a nice time getting together, wasn't it?" Michael Bluth, the former head of Bluth realty sat across from his childhood infatuation, Sally Sitwell, the daughter of Stan Stitwell, who ran his old company's former competitor. Tossing back her long blonde hair, Sally looked up with her big blue eyes, flashed a little smile and reacted all aloof as Michael once again tried to rekindle old feelings.

"Michael, is this a business luncheon, or are you just trying to rekindle old feelings?" She cloyingly tested his feelings.

"Well, I'm sure any situation would be mutually beneficial to us both." Michael tried to be charming. "And for once, no one in my family will be bothering us…"

His cell started buzzing.

"I'm not answering that."

It buzzed again.

"I'm still not answering it."

It buzzed yet again.

"Michael," Sally leaned over and kissed him platonically. "You can stop trying… Please, find someone else you can really have a fairy tale with and grow old together." She collected her purse and lifted herself to her feet, striding out of the restaurant and inadvertently crushing Michael's feelings. A brief moment of depression and disbelief, he tried to listen for that Ron Howard-like voice in his head to tell him what to do, but the obnoxious and callous sound of his cell kept buzzing.

"I really hate my family." He clicked on the phone without checking the number. "Who is it?"

"Michael…" It was his mother. "Your niece, Maeby, is in jail."

"Not my problem." He clicked the phone off and dropped it into a pitcher of water on a cart getting rolled by his table. He gestured for his waitress.

"Waitress, Scotch?" He exhaled hard with his aggravated lips quivering under his breath. Another blonde beauty at another table eyed him once, then shared a look with him then rolled her eyes across the restaurant with its wood furnishings and commercial art pieces deigned to fill the walls. None of it was remarkable, and the lights were replications of regular standard designs seen in a million other places.

"The security system in the place stinks."

"Parker…" Alec Hardison looked up from his seafood lasagna. "We're trying to be normal tonight. That's what you wanted to try."

"I know, but normal is boring." Parker swayed with a light gasp from her chest. "It's nothing like the thrill of hanging twenty feet off the floor from an air vent over a valuable piece of jewelry worth three million dollars." She paused. "Where do you think Nate and Sophie are tonight?"

"We'll get another job soon kicking bad guy butt." The self-avowed computer geek looked up to his girlfriend the former cat burglar and understood her impatience. Since Nate and Sophia had departed their group, they were not as active as before, but they were still pulling off jobs for people wronged by big business conglomerates. Elliott was off arranging such a job, but in between, Parker had wanted to know what it was like to be normal, and that's what they were doing.

"I miss the old days…" Parker confessed under her breath.

"I know, baby… but you're with me tonight." He looked back upon her. "Let's just make it between us… What do you want to do after dinner?"

"Check out the museum."

"Sounds great, but I'm pretty sure its closed by now…"

"That's the best part…" She grinned that little grin she had when she was wearing a harness and descending from a roof toward private artwork. On the other side of them beyond a row of potted plants on a wall, an attractive blonde in a dark jacket and pants combo with a blue blouse sat talking on her phone in the restaurant. The gentleman she was with looked to be her husband, a character in that awkward age where the still youthful look of the thirties was gradually being interceded by the pangs of middle age. Clad in a tasteful suit for what was supposed to be a romantic night out with the love of his life, he was instead listening to the toils of his wife's distractions and enjoying his seafood plate when he would much rather be telling his wife of almost fifteen years how much he loved her and how grateful he was to have her in his life, but instead, he heard the minutiae and tribulations of his angry children calling from the family home in Collinsport, Maine.

"Tricia? Tricia!" Dr. Ally Masterson-Collins feuded with her daughter. "Stop stealing clothes from your sister's closet!" She paused to hear part of the problem. "I didn't just mean Lainey's closet, I meant everyone's closets and mine too! I know you still have my green cashmere blouse! I know you do. I know you do!"

The only son of Barnabas and Angelique Collins, novelist William Collins had planned for this trip to California to be an anniversary for the two of them since his daughter Nikki had ruined the last one by getting arrested for driving his sister's new car into the post office without even having a driver's license. His mother said it was the family curse to have kids worse than you were as a kid, and that taunt was turning out to be true. In his youth, he had nearly burned down part of Collinwood, got lost in a canoe at sea and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard and pretty much left everyone from his Aunt Carolyn to Maggie Evans, his old governess and now the wife of his Uncle Quentin, a nervous wreck. Listening to the trouble at home, he just grinned in annoyed agreement to Ally when she looked at him then set his fork aside and pulled out his own cell phone. It looked like he just might be taking charge of the predicament.

"Tricia, put your grandmother on the phone!" Ally argued with her eldest daughter. "Put her on the phone. Put her on the phone!"

"Hey, Rick…" William had called his buddy, crime novelist Richard Castle, in New York City. "How you doing, buddy? No, I'm not in Manhattan, I'm in California…."

Ally stopped talking as she heard her daughter and mother-in-law arguing through the phone.

"Yeah, they're making one of my old writing projects into a movie…" William revealed frankly. "I just needed your help to show my wife how rude it was to talk to someone else on a phone when you're trying to have a romantic night out without the obnoxious kids…"

Gradually lowering her phone at that force-fed lesson, Ally looked at him a bit annoyed.

"Oh, she got the message…" William noticed her face of contempt. "Thanks for the help… Say hello to Kate and Detective Taylor for me…."

"Mrs. Collins?" Ally heard her mother-in-law on the phone. "Thanks for interceding…" She talked much lower and discreetly. "We'll talk later." She clicked off her phone and looked up with her big blue eyes. "Sorry…"

"I know you don't like being away from home…" Her husband clicked off his phone and placed it back in his jacket. "But this was supposed be our time…" William stressed he wanted to be with her instead of having a phone between them. "We have a great suite in a nice hotel driving distance from the best tourist spots in the world and all you're doing is arguing long distance with the kids and checking on your patients at the hospital. What about me?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not used to doing nothing and having you around…" Ally signed and struggled with her restlessness. "I do love you, I do love having you around, but I worked so hard to get where I am…"

"But how about working on us for a while?" He took her hands across the table then leaned across the side and kissed her lovingly on the lips. A small grimace of giggling from her lips later, Ally leaned back at looked down at her veal scampi and realized that she had barely touched it. Her hand was reaching for her wine as William filled it for her before sitting back and dreamily looking back on her like the youth he was when they were both attending Collinsport High School. Leonard wanted that kind of a romance. He wanted that complete and utter devotion between two people who were completely in love with each other. He barely had it with Penny, but with Bernadette's help, he thought he could finally find it. Sighing a bit, he turned back from gazing around the couples in the dining room and looked back to Howard for honoring their "girlfriend pact," especially since it had been he and Penny who had fixed them up together.

"Thanks again for doing this, Bernadette…" Leonard looked up apologetically to her.

"Oh, I take pacts very seriously." She chirped back with a happy grin. "One time at my lab, a petri dish of a genetically-modified super-virus went missing. That day, we all made a pinky swear to never admit that we crossed the Ebola virus with the common cold."

"Heh…" Howard nervously scratched himself behind his right ear. "Why the hell would you cross the Ebola virus with the common cold?"

"We never did…" Bernadette chirped back. "That would be a terrible, terrible thing…." She grinned secretly and sipped her complimentary water. Howard and Leonard looked at each other briefly nervous over the table unsure of what to say before Leonard looked back over to the Collinses at their table. Ally was once more bickering with yet another teenage daughter over the phone, apparently over something her other daughter did or did not do. William sat across from her, slightly slumped with his head resting upon on his arm on the table, partially sipping his wine and possibly wishing his romantic night out was nearly as nice as Leonard's. Their gazes across from each other was broken by the sound of Bernadette's phone squeaking from her dainty purse. She turned her head to it slung over the back of her chair and pulled it out to answer it. Her small device in her hand, she clicked the button to respond to it.

"Hello?" Bernadette slightly scowled as Howard and Leonard listened to her side of the conversation. "Yes, it is… Who is this?"

Leonard started rolling his head to the side a bit disappointed. He had been dumped. He knew it.

"Oh, dear…" Bernadette became genuinely concerned. "Will she be okay?"

"She's not showing up, is she?" Leonard exhaled depressingly and tilted his head to the side ready for the bad news.

"You don't know that…." Howard tried to keep up his spirits then turned to his girlfriend. "He got dumped, didn't he?" Bernadette waved at him to stop talking while she was trying to hear her caller.

"Oh, would you?" Bernadette was still speaking on her phone, now sounding relieved that things were working out like this. "That would be perfect! See you when you get here!" She clicked off her phone and looked to Leonard. "Joy's not coming…."

"I knew it…." Leonard felt deflated and defeated.

"Leonard, wait…" Bernadette stopped him from getting up from his seat. "This new girl, Lisa, is talking her place… I don't know her, but she sounds nice."

"Did she sound fat?" Howard asked.

"How do you sound "fat?" The cute blonde biochemist could not believe he had asked that.

"I don't know…" Howard thought about it. "Kind of like… "Hello, I'm Lisa, and I eat small animals." He did his best low husky echo and ended it with the deep-throated laugh of Jabba the Hutt from "Return Of The Jedi." Leonard looked at him once then glanced back to the empty table the aunt and niece had been sitting at before then over to the Collins now in harmony once more. They two of them looked very much in love. William clinked his glass of wine with his wife, shined his smile to her and wanted to marry her all over again. Leonard wanted that. He wanted true love. He wanted romance. He wanted the type of relationship that country songs would be written. Sighing a bit, he looked to Bernadette optimistically wishing him to wait another few minutes longer and lifted his water to take a sip. Out the corner of his left eye, he thought he saw Lisa coming down the long hall from the foyer area of the Edmonds, but when he looked closer, he realized it was Penny showing up herself to fight for him. There were a few things wrong with her image. She was not dressed in her usual casual-wear style but in a more rural adventure type attire. Her boots were expensive, far too expensive for a struggling actress on a waitress budget, and her blue jeans and brown leather jacket were practically right out of the J. Peterman catalog…. adventure-wear made chic. The most obvious distraction from her regular svelte and athletic look was her sudden voluptuous figure… Her bosom was almost as large as Bernadette now, making her look like a blonde Katy Perry coming back from a shooting of another "Indiana Jones" movie. Her eyes noticed Leonard straight away, gazing upon him with a slight regal grin that slowly broke from her lips as she brushed her long blonde locks from her face. Howard's jaw dropped as she came into view. Behind her eyeglasses, Bernadette's eyes widened in awed shock and stunned surprise.

"Are you Leonard?" She came right up to their table. "Hi… I'm Lisa… Dr. Lisa Wilder… I'm your date for tonight." She responded with a quirky toss of her head. Leonard had drawn quiet, and Howard had froze in mid sip of his water with Bernadette sitting stunned, her eyes wide open and her lips lightly parted in surprise. From somewhere, they thought they heard the light tinkling of the ivory keys on a piano slowly joined by the strings of a harp and the bouncing staccato from a flute most familiar with a series from the Fifties most linked to individuals encountering paranormal events. Whether they knew it or not, they were also being watched from afar. A nervous gentleman in a dark suit and tie at an out of the way table lightly tapped the butt of his cigarette into his ashtray and turned to an imaginary audience.

"Submitted for your approval…" He spoke. "Dr. Leonard Leakey Hofstadter, an experimental physicist from New Jersey transplanted into the South California wilderness known as Los Angeles, or more specifically, the city of Pasadena. Leonard is one of those men who believes he knows how the universe works from every tiny atom to every unseen particle of matter in between, but he is about to realize that some things just cannot be explained in a lab. Leonard has just met a woman whose mere nature and existence is a violation of all his beliefs and that which he holds dear. A woman whose mystique may be more than he is ready to understand. You see… Dr. Lisa Elinor Wilder doesn't really exist but instead originates from a realm far beyond ours… that shadowy place which we call… The Twilight Zone."


	2. Chapter 2

2

Ten minutes earlier….

The Edmonds famed restaurant was a bit busy tonight, but guests were getting into the romantic Pasadena location with small waiting periods of ten to twelve minutes, but some people received their tables sooner at under eight minutes. It was not quite the exquisite fine dining establishment of the Hotel Tipton or the Quarrels out toward Oceanside, but it did put on the airs of the more expensive establishments and bistros. It had been built out of an old winery on the hotel property, expanded and updated in the Fifties in the days after the end of the gangster-era. Relics and decorations of that time decorated the walls with white table linens on the tables and hard wood chairs with baroque designs replicated from museum pieces. The tables had candles and flowers, and a wine steward often moved through to pour wine and champagne for guests. The place even looked expensive, but Howard had been here before with his relatives from Sacramento, and he recalled the menu quite well and the dishes he could afford. He glanced the room over and waited for his table from the foyer then thought he'd check the lounge area for Leonard to arrive. Public hostess Cyndi Reason looked up regally in her shoulderless powder blue dress to him and then back to her niece as he departed her line of sight.

"Thanks again for dinner, Aunt Cyndi…"

"You're welcome…." The socialite beamed her grin toward her sister's daughter. "I love spending time with you girls… You're like the daughters I never had."

"What about Christina?"

"She's the daughter I got!" Cyndi Reason had always felt she was destined to be single with as many boyfriends as possible so the rumor of her having other children out in the world was always a possibility. From her penthouse in Chicago, the timeless beauty had been linked to George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Brendan Fraser and countless other boyfriends. In the whispers of Chicago social circles, her bed was reported to be as large as twelve feet wide by fifteen feet under a mirrored ceiling. In fact, she owned all top five floors of the White Building in Chicago, which if the rumors were true had been linked together into a maze in the Forties as an over-lapping labyrinth of halls, stairways and galleries with secret doorways and passages. Sara Michelle Troy had lived there at one time when she was a model, but now she had her own horse ranch near Olympia, Washington when she wasn't expected to make appearances at the family estate near the tiny hamlet of Collinwood, Maine near Lake Woebegon. Those were just the few scant things the public knew about this affluent family.

"So…" Cyndi was finishing her Caesar Salad. "I have not seen or heard a thing about that hunky brother of yours. Can you still bounce a quarter off his ass?"

"Aunt Cyndi, I'm eating here!" The younger girl dropped her fork next to her fried tilapia and sipped her wine. Her brother was a still touchy subject in her life. He had been raised as William Samms in London, England; his foster mother had been an old friend of their mother during their wilder days. Sara met him first at Lauperville High School south of Los Angeles, California and had romantically dated him. Unfortunately, two years later her mother got the family estate back out of probate and decided she wanted her daughters back together… and her long lost son, someone they did not know even existed. When Madelyn Donna Louise Troy suddenly revealed to the eight sisters their long-lost younger brother, Sara had been one of three who ran screaming from the room.

"Did he marry that girl yet?" Cyndi asked. "Or is he still pining for that little sorceress on Waverly Place?"

"I don't think he's ever getting married…." Sara sipped her wine again and tore off a piece of bread to dab into her plate. "He's in too much trouble for that stunt he pulled with that girl's brother. Mom shipped him off to Camp Half-Blood, and he's not crazy about the place… mostly Olympian demigods, only two Asgardians, one Danaan and one Anasazi…." Sara ate her bread and lifted some of her fish on her fork. "He gets a lot of flak for being half Olympian and half Asgardian, not to mention part Danaan…"

"The Olympian gods never did get along well with the Celtic or German gods…." Cyndi still remembered when Uncle Hades and Uncle Loki started the Great Chicago Fire of 1906, but her interest in the last five hundred years of her existence was interrupted in the appearance of Dr. Leonard Hofstadter entering the restaurant and taking his seat with Bernadette and Howard at the next table. Though short and bespectacled, Cyndi looked into his big brown eyes and grinned ready for another young lover. In one glance, she could read the young physicist's entire family tree. He wasn't a demigod like herself, but like so many gifted mortals, he had to have at least one god or immortal in his ancestry; with a name that German, it was possibly someone from the House of Odin like herself or her niece. Unfortunately, without keeping that immortal vibe alive in the family by intermingling with other demigods, it was possibly bred out by years of marriages with other mortals. Feeling the pangs of her grandmother, the love goddess, and the ferocity of her hammer-throwing grandfather, she felt a stirring in her little frame to vamp the young scientist. Finishing her meal, Sara watched her aunt give the waitress her credit card for their meal then turned to look upon Leonard for herself.

"Oh, cute stuff at six o'clock…"

"What else can you tell?" Her aunt the love-goddess was grinning.

"Hmmmm…" Sara's psychic gifts started reading Leonard as well. "He's smart… I can see him in a lab, he likes science, also a comic book geek and fantasy nerd…"

"No more fantasy nerds for me…" Cyndi Reason's attraction clicked off. "Once I tell them I'm part Olympian god, they're always asking to go to Pandara, Narnia or some stupid fictional place…"

"He's also off a bad break-up…." Sara's clairvoyance went further. "He was in love with a girl named Penny, but she was not as deep into the relationship as he was and they broke up…. " She paused. "Uh-oh, he's been fixed up with some girl named Joy Selkirk, but fate says he's still meant to reunite with Penny. This Joy is really, really annoying…. Almost as annoying as someone named Sheldon…"

"When was the last time you played love-goddess?" Cyndi signed her receipt and gave it to the waitress clearing the table.

"I don't do that anymore." Sara turned around to see her aunt rising from the table. Standing in her black sweater and blue jeans, she turned to grab her father's old Air Force jacket stolen from her brother's closet.

"Oh, you know you want to…"

"No, I don't…"

"Yes, you do…" Cyndi collected her wrap and left a five-dollar tip for her server. "Darling, your mother is the grand-daughter of Aphrodite… For two thousand years, we've always helped true love find its mark, reunited lost loves and ruined the lives of the mismatched." She and her niece glided unnoticed toward the front entrance. "Can you seriously see a future for this young man with this horrible excuse for a lady?"

"I have been feeling a bit bored these days…" Sara lightly tucked a strand of her long blonde hair behind her left ear. "But it's so not me… I like teasing William… not complete strangers…"

"Think of it as clearing your palate…" They hesitated briefly outside the restaurant's spare dining room. It was a smaller seventy-five seat room for private parties decorated with the same modern elite furnishing of the main dining room, old tintype photos in simple frames, emerald green leather seats with wood tables and old gas lights reused as modern light fixtures. It was entered through a set of glass wood doors off-set by windows letting the windows stream sunlight through the building during the day or let patrons view the scene of Pasadena lit up at night by the brilliance of a million lights. A set of curtains further separated the room from the rest of the building as the soft soles on sneakers treaded up the exterior walkway of the location and entered the hostess area.

"Hi…" Joy Selkirk entered the restaurant foyer and walked into the lounge area off the bar area. Still clad in her exercise clothes from her Krav Maga class, she stopped up to the hostess podium. "I'm meeting someone. Bernadette Rostenkowski?"

"I have a fourth person opening with the party of Howard Wolowitz…" Natalie Bristow was the hostess of the restaurant. She was not allowed to be prejudiced with anyone inappropriately dressed for the place since the cheerleader incident. Against her best judgment, she decided to allow the exercise-dressed guest.

"That's it."

"I'll show you the way."

"I can find it. Thanks, princess." Joy patted Natalie on the back, and Natalie freaked and left to get another new clean work blouse from the storage room. Out of her line of vision, Joy continued on her way to the dining area down the hall, passing the curtain to the empty spare dining room on her right, just as an arm reached out of it, grabbed her by her shoulder strap, then yanked her off her feet into the room with a light shriek. All she saw was the brief face of Cyndi Reason looking down on her before drifting off to sleepy darkness…

"I used to do that to Lecy when we were little." Sara spoke of the way she could put anyone into a sleep-induced hypnotic coma.

"She's going to wake up tomorrow feeling…." Cyndi dropped the girl into the seat of a booth. "…Sick as a dog."

"So, I guess I go take her place…"

"Not yet…" Cyndi Reason turned to Sara and gestured lightly before the younger demi-goddess. The younger girl felt herself lightly swooning, her body feeling heavier and light tingling in her fingers and toes. Her long blonde locks suddenly filled out and cascaded around her back and shoulders. She knew had had been transformed and reshifted her weight to her other leg. She was taller now, her clothing mystically treated to expand and alter to her new size. Her aunt was just a bit shorter to her now as Sara rolled her blue eyes to the mirror in the room expecting to see her own regal face, but now, she resembled the girl from Leonard's memories. She now looked exactly like Penny Parker.

"There…" Her aunt shined and primped her attire. "Now, you look perfect!"

"Aunt Cyndi…" Sara stepped back with her new height and new size. "This isn't funny! Change me back now!"

"It's very important that you look like Leonard's dream girl, and this is it." She recalled how she used to change herself into Jean Harlow and Elizabeth Taylor back in the Golden Age of Hollywood when she had a new boyfriend for every week. "Mortals don't like change, they don't pay attention to repetition or déjà vu…. You need him to fall for the girl he is meant to be with…"

"Really?" Her voice sounded annoyed. "Well, why don't I just do this?" Sara responded sarcastically and half-seriously as she looked down upon her sweater, watching it extending, filling out and becoming wider and fuller. She was not going to be an exact clone of Penny Parker… maybe an exaggerated version of her. Her attire slightly expanded for her new dimensions as she lifted her head back up to the mirror and mussed her longer and fuller hair once more.

"Hello, Ashley… Hello, Mary Kate…" She named her new bosom and lightly giggled. "I've seen these things turn full-grown men into babbling morons." She had learned this trick from her sisters Lecy and Lisa who often enjoyed in spooking and terrifying their dates back home. Her sisters, Jessica and Kristy, on the other hand had inherited their mother's full-figure looks, but the rest of them, Gwen, Lecy, Lisa and herself had more modest figures like their cousins Carolyn and Aunt Marcia on their father's side of the family. Cyndi motioned up to her looking slightly jealous with a touch of disbelief.

"Princess, you've got to stop hanging out with your sisters…"

"Whatever…" Sara's mind was still thinking behind the face of Leonard's girlfriend. "Take Lady Sweat-Stains to her home, but leave me her cell phone…" She paused to accept the device and rummage through its contact history. "I think this might be fun after all…." Her aunt stood by her grinning like a modern Trickster. Tossing back her new full mane of blonde hair back, Sara was already composing a fake identity and history in her mind. She tapped out the cell phone number for Bernadette on the phone.

"Hello…" Sara looked into the mirror at the reflection of Penny Parker replacing her. "Is this Bernadette Rostenkowski?"

"Yes, it is…" Bernadette responded. "Who is this?"

"This is…" Sara hesitated from using her real name. "Lisa… Lisa Wilder… I'm a friend of Joy's." She lied. "It seems she won't be able to make it… She came down with a case of food poisoning."

"Oh, dear…" Bernadette sounded genuinely concerned. "Will she be okay?"

"Yes…" Sara was starting already to form an identity and history for Lisa Wilder in her head from separate parts of her sisters' lives. "You know, I'm not doing anything tonight…." She peeked out and could see Bernadette at her table blissfully unaware the two were actually so close. "…And I'm so close, I could fill in for Joy if you like?"

"Oh, would you?" Bernadette was relieved that things were working out like this. "That would be perfect!"

"I'm just a few seconds away…" Sara responded. "I'm practically pulling in as I speak!" She clicked the phone off, tossed the long blonde locks of Penny Parker out of her line of sight and looked to her Aunt Cyndi standing by her side.

"You see…" The flighty hostess lifted her head up and beamed proudly to her niece. "You're acting as if you've been doing this your whole life."

"Just so long as I get my real face and body back afterward…" The demigoddess checked out her reflection in the mirror with Penny's likeness copying her movements. "Although I might keep the boobs…." Her Aunt Cyndi had by now mystically warped through interdimensional space with the most unlikely of blind dates dragging behind her. Mustering up her penance for mischief, the formerly petite heiress took a deep breath in this new voluptuous body she had and briefly hesitated before passing through the curtains for her trip back to the dining room.

"I can't believe I'm doing this…" She told herself as she stepped forward; her new cup size slightly bouncing to the hormones of every single male in the dining room. A bus boy slowed down from collecting dishes from a table, a waiter became distracted from taking an order and two female employees looked up, at each other then back again. His head resting on his arm, Leonard casually glanced up then back again in shock, his jaw slowly dropping in stunned shock. She looked like Penny, but somehow… he knew she wasn't….

"Are you Leonard?" The young demi-goddess strided lightly up to their table. "Hi… I'm Lisa… Dr. Lisa Wilder… I'm your date for tonight." She looked them over and lightly grinned at their shock. She was hoping to get their reaction to her new resemblance to the actress from Leonard's building, and they did not disappoint in the least. Bernadette couldn't speak. She could just barely find her water and take a drink. Howard uttered one barely, "Oy vey." Leonard was shocked almost as much as they were. He thought for sure this woman was Penny until he saw her incredible figure and regal bearing. Sara's mind was trying to keep from giggling. Leonard had raised to his feet with his heart beating faster and faster, his fingers nervously stumbling through his jacket pocket for his inhaler.

"Penny?" Leonard finally choked out the name.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh-my-god…" Bernadette reacted with both fear and stunned surprise. "She looks exactly like Penny!"

"Well, not exactly like her…" Howard ogled her figure then felt Bernadette's foot striking him to his leg as Leonard held out her chair and helped her sit by him. Grinning ear to ear as if he had hit the lottery, he noticed as Howard snapped a photo of Lisa on his phone and was texting it to the real Penny Parker. Bernadette must have noticed because she did the same thing. Several dozen blocks away and across a highway or two, the real Penny was in her apartment scraping the dead skin from her foot with a pumice stone. Dressed in shorts and a worn t-shirt under her robe, she heard her phone buzz then reached to pick it up with her bottle of water in her other hand. She noticed Bernadette's name then Howard's come up on her screen. Bernadette had typed, "Meet Leonard's New Date!"

"Like I give a damn about some tramp Leonard is dating." She mumbled. "Let's see if she's prettier than I am…." She tipped back her bottle of water to her lips and screamed into the bottle as the image popped up, spewing a spray of water five feet long across her apartment.

"A doctor?" Leonard was grinning, giggling and partially bouncing in his seat like a small boy at Christmas. "Not an actress?"

"Not an actress…" Lisa sipped her water.

"So… what kind of doctor are you?" Bernadette asked both stunned and surprise. Since when did Joy know a girl who looked exactly like Penny?

"I'm a forensic anthropologist with minor degrees in veterinary medicine and behavioral science." Lisa had stolen two more subjects from two of her sisters to become Leonard's dream girl. "I'm down here from Olympia, Washington examining Native American remains in the Mojave Desert with Dr. Temperence Brennan from the Jeffersonian and Dr. Niles Reeser of the Mecklenberg Academy in Germany. They're actually pretty fascinating… they might be the first genuine evidence of an earlier Pre-Columbian Mayan tribe existing much further north than what was previously believed."

"I am so winning this break-up…." Leonard sipped his water and couldn't stop smiling.

"You look so much like Penny…." Howard could not stop staring at Lisa. "I would have bet even money you were Penny… but with two honeydew melons down the front of your sweater."

"Howard…" Bernadette warned him from being crude.

"Not that I don't love your own two honeydews, my little honeydew…" He seemed to sate her anger and secure his place in her heart. Bernadette just sipped her water again as Howard finally waved their waiter over to order dinner. Leonard was in the mood for something thick and hearty, something told him he might need as much strength he could get tonight. Over his non-kosher Italian spaghetti, Howard and Bernadette had plied Lisa for more details about her about her life. She just had a small seafood salad, but over it she spoke of her sisters and her little brother; most of it was the truth. As Sara Michelle Troy, she really did live in a large mansion in Maine and have a small personal ranch in Olympia to raise horses. Her little brother really did impersonate celebrities and order pizzas in the voices of Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. Yes, her twin sister really did once star in a movie with Meryl Streep, and her mother really did work in fashion design, but she skewed things slightly to say Lisa's mother worked for Madelyne Troy instead of saying she was fashion designer Madelyne Troy. However, she did steer away from confessing that she had been on the Carpathia when it picked up the survivors of the Titanic or that she had worked as a photojournalist during the Fifties or that her grandmother had faked her death as Marilyn Monroe in 1963 to start life anew as a socialite living in the south of France.

Over on Los Robles Avenue, Penny had composed herself enough to change her clothes of the water down the front of her clothes and had stormed out of her apartment. After twelve ignored voice mails to Leonard's phone, she realized he must have had it shut off and decided to confront the nutcase in the apartment across the landing from her own.

"Sheldon…" She knocked hard. "Sheldon…" She knocked harder. "Sheldon…" She copied his own annoying knocking style.

"Stop knocking!" Dr. Cooper had appeared at the door. Tall and angular with round eyes on a triangular face with short cut hair, he wore his orange Flash shirt over a green long sleeved undershirt and tan corduroy pants. "Do you know how annoying that is?!"

"Yes, I know very well how annoying it is!" She flashed her phone. "Who is this?! Who is this?! What kind of sick cloning experiment have you and Leonard been working on?"

"Oh, good!" Sheldon shined quite please. "I'm so glad you and Leonard made up. I was getting so tired of him whining and moping around the apartment."

"That's not me, Sheldon!" Penny flashed her phone at him with stressed impatience. "Look at the boobs! Look at the boobs!"

"Penny," Sheldon sighed as he looked around the stairs. "Could we talk about this inside the apartment? I'm trying to avoid Amy Farrah Fowler."

"Who's the girl, Sheldon? Who's the girl?!"

"Who's the girl? Who's the girl?" Sheldon mocked her. "Penny, other people might have more urgent problems here aside from your own narcissistic fantasies. I have much bigger problems far-reaching yours. Amy Farrah Fowler wants me to meet her mother, and I have no idea what that means!"

"Sheldon…" Penny grabbed the cuff of his t-shirt in her fist, wrenched it tight into her fingers and yanked his head down to her height and scowled with her eyes narrowed into two angry slits. "You either tell me who the girl is, or else I'll pull your underwear so tight over your head it will take surgery to remove!"

"That's anatomically impossible." His quivering voice squeaked out barely audible.

Penny started annoyingly shaking her head.

"Howard and Bernadette fixed Leonard up on a blind date! That's all I know!"

That must have been a good enough answer. She suddenly dropped him and turned back to her apartment, leaving Sheldon gasping for breath and lifting himself back up to his feet. Across the landing, Penny slammed her door shut.

"I hope this new Penny has a friendlier disposition than the last one." He muttered, checked the stars again and slipped back into his apartment. Across the way, Penny was pacing back and forth and trying to call Bernadette once again. At the Edmonds, the short petite biochemist looked at her buzzing phone and noticed Penny's face on it. Lisa looked over from her small salad while listening to Leonard's story. Howard glanced up as well as Bernadette checked the call. Even the ring sounded angry.

"You going to answer that?" He asked.

"I'll call her back after dessert."


	3. Chapter 3

3

It was the dawn of a new day, and Dr. Sheldon Cooper, the theoretical theorist with the grating personality and pompous attitude, woke from a stiff coffin-tight pose in his bed ready to start his day. His previous problem with his pseudo-ersatz girlfriend had resolved itself with a short stint of role-playing to sate her mother's curiosity. All he had to do was suggest the existence of a carnal relationship in their noncommittal friendship, and he could then freely continue the façade of an ersatz friendship with the one girl who came close to being his intellectual equal.

"Morning vocal test…" He tended and straightened his bed while checking his voice levels like an android checking its systems. "Testing… secondary morning vocal test…." He had pulled up his blankets and neatly tucked them back under his mattress. His hand then reached for his robe hanging on the nook behind his door and pulled it on over his dark blue pajamas. Clearing and evaluating the range of his voice, he started doing a pitch test as to frequency with his feet carrying him into the hall.

"Good morning, Leonard." He passed his roommate in the hall.

"Good morning, Sheldon…" Leonard responded not nearly as jovial as Sheldon as he passed him in the hall. As Sheldon passed him, he stopped at the bathroom door, checked his watch for exactly 7:00 then entered on the second to stay true on a twenty-year long morning regiment he had started since he was eleven years old. Right as he entered the bathroom, he completely missed seeing Lisa Wilder coming from Leonard's bedroom, zipping up her blue jeans and tucking her sweater in to it with a toss of her cascading blonde locks falling over her other shoulder. As she passed the boy's bathroom, she heard Sheldon through the door.

"Pee for Huston, pee for Austin…" He rhymed. "Pee for the state my heart got lost in."

She stopped and looked back at the closed door with stunned surprise then looked back at Leonard.

"Something his mother taught him." Leonard revealed. "Coffee?"

"Yes…." Lisa responded back. "Your roommate is a little more quirky that you described."

"Quirky?" Leonard had started the coffee percolating and turned back to Lisa sitting at his counter. "That bastard is looking at quirky in the rear view mirror and driving straight into Lake Crazy." He dreamily looked upon her and felt as if Penny was back in his life. A long romantic sigh came from his big beaming grin as Lisa looked back upon him with her big blue eyes. They seemed bluer than Penny, deep and pure like the sky on a perfectly clear day. Her skin was a perfect golden tan and when he embraced her last night, it felt as if he was embracing an ivory statue brought to life. Even her scent, it was never the same… like walking through a garden and smelling a hundred flowers one at time. She was almost too perfect, too good to be true, and it terrified him that he could possibly screw up this relationship like he did with the real Penny.

"So, how much longer you in town?" He asked as he poured the first cup of coffee for her.

"How long do you want me in town?" Lisa responded with that honeyed voice of a girl who might be actually flirting with him, but he couldn't possibly be that lucky.

"I thought you had to get back to that horse ranch you have back home?"

"I've got a caretaker…" She sipped her morning drink. "And a horse trainer… they can miss me for a few days…"

"Just a few days?" Leonard heard Sheldon coming from the bathroom to give him his turn. The tall angular presence that was Sheldon Cooper came strolling out in his blue robe tied up over his pajamas and emerged gliding out over the wood floor ready for the rest of his morning regimen, but as his eyes gazed up to see Leonard, his view was immediately taken by the young lady with whom Leonard was sharing coffee.

"Leonard…" He started for the refrigerator to pour his morning juice. "I'm so glad you and Penny finally resolved that nonsense that was the last few days. Perhaps now, we can finally return a state of cohabital existence within the accepted boundaries of this apartment."

"Sheldon…" Leonard grinned as Lisa grimaced with a light chuckle. "This isn't Penny…. This is Lisa. Let me introduce Dr. Lisa Wilder of the Department of Anthropology from Seattle's Natural History Museum."

"Hello…." Lisa sipped her coffee and daintily waved her fingers out of sequence to say hello. Sheldon just stood at attention after filling his cup as if his mind was trying to process the amount of information he had been given in search of error. He barely moved for six seconds then turned his head toward Leonard.

"Bazinga…" He smirked his pompous laugh and returned the juice to the refrigerator. He thought he was being teased. Sipping his juice, he turned toward the sink as Leonard grinned knowingly toward Lisa lightly chuckling to herself.

"Lisa, could you please say something smart for Sheldon?"

"The large foramen magnum and high zygomatic arch of the subject is indicative of Mongloid or Native American ancestry likely of Pre-Columbian origin." Lisa grinned mischievously and playfully as Sheldon suddenly whirled around in shock, dropping his plastic juice cup to the floor and clutching his hands to his chest both terrified and completely unprepared. His eyes were widened in shock, his jaw slightly agape from a low piercing shriek. This was impossible. He considered Penny a simpleton, a mildly educated rube from the backwoods rural world he imaged as Nebraska. He had never heard anything mildly intelligent spew from her lips beyond the meanderings of celebrity gossip, several dozen veiled insults and nonsensical hillbilly stories of a state he pictured still trapped in the Eighteenth Century. How was this possible?

"It's not possible…" He inaudibly spoke at a voice dissonance stifled by shock and complete amazement before gradually creeping up to Lisa as if she were an alien life form. "The resemblance is amazing!" He started moving his finger in front of her as if he was checking her eyesight, but Lisa just reacted with a light sigh of amusement and looked back to Leonard.

"Not really…" Lisa sipped her coffee briefly. "After all, if we postulate a limited spectrum of possible genetic genome variations within a finite range of DNA combinations, it is far more likely for certain combinations to appear randomly in common family lines, hence the "identical cousin" theory."

"Isn't she incredible?" Leonard was once more beaming and alive with contented bliss. Lisa was his dream girl; she was blonde, beautiful and smart, and best of all, it was almost as if he and Penny were back together without her past dating history looming over their heads.

"Incredible…" Sheldon looked fascinated and overjoyed to find someone he thought was a more logical match for Leonard than that blonde waitress across the landing from their apartment. "She's even a step up from your relationship from Dr. Stephanie Barnett. "

Even Lisa raised her eyebrows on that comment.

"Leonard, here's something I never thought I'd say to you…" Sheldon composed himself and cleared his throat. "But I approve of your potential mate to procreate your seed."

"What?" Lisa reacted in disbelief.

"Sheldon, don't ruin this relationship before it starts." Leonard was grimacing in embarrassed pain.

"I'm not ruining it. I'm applauding it…" Sheldon was grinning at this arrangement. "She will be an excellent addition to our little motley intrepid band of adventurers. No more will we have to listen to the backwoods tales or corn-husker's gossip of the infamous tales of Brad and Angelina from that waitress's retinue of rabble-rousers as she pumices her feet and cuts her toenails on our sofa with parts of her DNA accumulating all over our apartment." He turned to Leonard. "Howard and Bernadette found you a perfect mate from where you failed three times before."

Leonard felt his embarrassment increasing twice-fold. What must Lisa think of him?

"Wow, you were not exaggerating last night…" She flashed back to their dialogue last night. "He is crazy." Truthfully, her psychic senses had already told her everything about Sheldon… from a young boy building machines out of an erector set at seven years old to starving for intellectual stimulation at home from boring relatives to getting attacked and beaten up by his schoolmates for reminding the teacher of homework assignments to trying to prove his mental superiority to his classmates. It was a mixture of a sad youth and a pompous intellectual; she wasn't sure how to treat him. Much of his modern idiosyncrasies were a beleaguered attempt to control the world around him and by an extension of it enforce his personality on those around him, but Lisa also saw a young boy growing into a man very likely to drive away everyone from his life by forcing his world upon them. Upset by her comment, Sheldon turned annoyed toward Leonard.

"I keep telling you, I'm not crazy; my mother had me tested!" He responded very terse and very adamant to have to repeat that fact.

"Yeah… but you never got that follow-up with that specialist in Houston." Lisa sipped her coffee.

"How did you know about that?" Both Leonard and Sheldon looked at her mystified. How did she know that? It was then that Sara Troy the demigoddess deep within the mortal disguise of Dr. Lisa Wilder started cringing. This was not the first time she had accidentally rattled off her clairvoyant visions to show off before others.

"Um, uh… Bernadette told me…" She excused herself and finished off her coffee, turning to pick up her leather jacket left on the sofa last night. "Leonard, sweetie, I gotta go… See you for lunch? Twelve-ish?" She kissed him.

"Yeah, sure…." He noticed as she quickly ignored his question, kissed him to the lips and quickly turned for the door, collecting her jacket and waving her fingers daintily again. Hopefully, this was the only odd quirk about her. She may have looked like Penny, but her personality was more compliant, a touch more feminine and sometimes almost cerebral, practically analytical, but then, she was an intellectual and that was to be expected.

"Leonard, I'm so proud of you…" Sheldon had picked up his juice cup and checked it for damage. "After that entire Penny fiasco, I am so glad you finally found a worthy mate to sire your future off-spring."

Leonard's head twitched and shook in confused shock. "What?!" He looked toward Sheldon trapped in a state of perturbed alarm.

"Not only is Dr. Wilder a worthy replacement to Penny, but she fills the same vacant niche abandoned by your former paramour, Dr. Stephanie Barnett." Sheldon appeared alighted and eager to be a part of this new experience. "Now, if we could only replace Wolowitz…"

"Oh, I don't think I like where this is going."

"But, fret not…" Sheldon's mind was already compiling and contriving scenarios in his head. "But working off the black box ruins of your relationships with both Penny and Stephanie, I am here to once again steer and guide your current relationship to the state to which it most definitely needs to survive." He had another thought. "Even better, now we have the added female supervision of Dr. Amy Fowler Fowler as support!"

"Oh no…" Leonard winced with emotional pain. "It is exactly as bad as I think it's going to get." He paused and turned for his time in the bathroom. "Sheldon, don't you remember? You were the reason my relationship with Stephanie failed."

"Well, that's preposterous!" Sheldon was indignant at his response. "What could I have possibly have done to alienate her into breaking up your relationship?"

"Well…" Leonard stopped at the bathroom door and looked back at his sociopathic roommate. "You followed us around on dates, you horned your way into intimate parts of our lives, you invaded our privacy, you hacked our e-mails, scheduled plans for us against our will and just generally annoyed Stephanie so much that she broke things off with me just to get the hell away from you!"

"Don't beat around the proverbial bush, Leonard…" Sheldon reacted sedately distant to his reaction. "What did I do wrong that would have her want to break up with you?"

A few minutes earlier, Lisa had stepped out of Leonard's apartment with a quiet passive grin and a wave to him. Taking a moment to pull on her jacket at the top of the stairs, she heard a click and a rattling of tumblers in a doorknob sliding apart to the apartment across the landing. When the door finally parted, Penny emerged with her purse over her shoulder in her orange-yellow vest, white blouse and green skirt ready for her lunch shift at the Cheesecake Factory. Keys in hand, she turned around to view… herself again in blue jeans, a black sweater and pulling on an old Air Force jacket with the name tag "Troy" on the left side breast pocket.

"Oh-my-God…." Penny and Lisa met and circled each other checking eat other out. This girl was perfect! Her skin was flawless, her hair was perfect and her figure was incredible. There were subtle differences between the two beyond their bust proportions. Lisa's eyes seemed regal in color and bolder than Penny whose skin had slight blotches from being in the sun. She also seemed to glide on her feet as if she'd been brought up in a finishing school or by expensive tutors teaching etiquette. Her hair seemed to flow and cascade as if it was alive, and her presence exuded a presence she could not comprehend as if she were beyond Earth, beyond this world or just beyond everything. It was as if she was a mirror reflection brought to life, but as Penny looked her over, Lisa was looking through her and could already see this girl's past flashing through her mind like a movie in fast-forward. She saw a small girl running barefoot on a cow farm outside Omaha, that child playing ball with her father and rough-housing with her brothers and then chasing after boys when her sexual maturity became too evident for her father to accept on his terms. In many ways, Penny Louise Parker was still a small girl waiting for her father to accept her.

"Hi…" Lisa stepped back and extended her hand. "You must be Penny. Leonard told me all about you last night…."

"He did?" Penny was dumb-founded by that response. "Yeah-yeah-yeah…. Whatever… Who or what are you and where do you come from?"

"I'm Lisa…" She pulled her hand back when she did not get a friendly response and swayed as her jacket parted to her proud figure. "Dr. Lisa Wilder from Olympia, Washington…"

"Doctor?" Penny choked a bit in disbelief. "Oh my God… how the hell can I compete with that?" She looked away as if she were still trying to understand this situation.

"Are we competing over something?"

"Yeah! And I'm losing!" Penny felt as if she were being tested by God or if she was dreaming this. "Look, evil clone…"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me…" Penny reacted indignantly pompous. "Just what are your intentions with Leonard?"

"I think he's cute." Lisa confessed. "He's smart, charming, a wonderful guy…. I don't know why you broke it off with him."

"I did not break…Okay, even if I did…" Penny noticed Lisa turn down the stairwell and followed her than allow her the last word. "Look… if you do anything to break his heart…"

"Break his heart?" They were reaching the third floor. "Look, you have nothing to fear from me; I'm not going to hurt Leonard… he's a great guy…"

"I made him a great guy!" Penny responded as they turned for the second. "You should have seen him when I first met him! Is there a shelf life on those things?" She could not stop herself from looking at Lisa's chest.

"Look, Penny…" They stopped on the second floor landing. "Am I threatening to you for some reason? Isn't the bigger welfare here is what does Leonard want? I mean… he dated you, it didn't work out, so now someone else is giving it a go. Isn't that what's more important?"

"You know," Penny was getting annoyed by this psychoanalytical discussion of their old relationship. "The only reason I'm not ripping into you and tearing your hair out by your brunette roots is it the fact that I have to get to work and I don't want to go in with blood on my uniform."

"Fisticuffs, Penny? Really?"

Penny struggled for a response, but she couldn't think of one. It was so hard to get this girl angry to through the first punch so she could finish it, but Lisa was too intellectual, too methodical. Grunting with repressed hostility and angry jealousy, she just made a loud scoffing noise and marched down the stairs to the first floor by herself. Yes, she might have screwed things up by breaking up with Leonard, but being reminded of it by a smarter and possibly more hotter version of herself taking her place was not a pleasant remedy to her situation. She was just not ready for that commitment when it came to her, and she was still struggling with the fact that she wasn't able to deal with it. Still grumbling and talking to herself as she marched out of the building and into the parking lot next door, gripping her car key from her purse with a bit of angry impatience and walked the narrow space along the building to her vehicle in the fifth spot from the wood pole at the curb. It was an old red 1980 Volkswagen Cabriolet she had picked up from a garage some time before and despite a dead speaker and an annoying engine light, it was her only current mode of transportation for the time. With a sharp turn of her wrist and a complacent look to her face in her car window reflection, she unlocked her car then pulled open the door and slipped in to the driver's seat with her anger slowly abating. It was not a good idea to go in angry, and she was already a bad waitress already. Unfortunately, when she turned the key on in the ignition, the old conveyance grumbled tiredly and weakly and her engine light came on to annoy her once more.

"No…. not this… not now…" She started feeling despair for herself and kept trying. It usually turned over on the third or fifth try. "Can my day just get any worse?"

Her engine suddenly coughed without her even trying, her transmission popped a click closer into park and a few bad seals repaired themselves under the hood. A new torrent of clean oil was emerging out of the sludge in the engine block, and her sulking air filter stopped choking and breathing cleaner once more. She suddenly heard the engine back click into place as it started purring under her control… that annoying red light suddenly fading away as even her dead car speaker to her left side suddenly cleared and radio chopper Dave warned her of which highway to stay off of on the way to work. Just a bit surprised and unprepared, Penny sat amazed at how the situation and her over twenty-year-old-car suddenly righted itself.

"Someone up there must really like me…" Penny gasped with a cocky grin, slipped her car into reverse and with a brief creak of her car's suspension started purring further forward out on to the light traffic out front on her way to her waitress job.

"You're welcome…." The demigoddess in the Air Force jacket sitting on the roof thought she needed one good day.


End file.
